Tag: Chicago piano instruction

I remember my first band. It was called Doctor Fox. We were in the deep of France, in Besancon, my hometown, but the name of our group was “Doctor Fox”, not “Docteur Renard”.  Go figure. It was a rock quartet: drum, bass, guitar and voice. We were emulating songs from another band, an english bar…

When I started to play I was mechanical. Everything I was doing was trying to put the cogs of the clock together. I was happy if my stuff was fitting together. That was enough for me to be able to play with other. Or so I thought. Actually, when I joined my first band, it…

Practicing is a weird state of mind. I can pile up the hours on a specific piece and not see any progress. For me, I’m exactly at the same step as I started. Discouraging. Woes is me! Sometimes, I try to quantize things. I would try the song or the exercise with a metronome and…

I am working on something new. It is kicking my butt. My mind and my body rebel against the concept. I just cannot make it mine. What to do? Push the angles, I say. Push-The-Angles! Let’s say I have a piece that full of obstacles and landmines. By the way, if the song has TOO…

A student comes brand new at my door. Usually they’re a bit nervous, so, I try to put them at ease with jokes. All of them terrific, I can assure you. The student does or does not relax, but, at least, she’s able able to work. I always start easy. I know how the game…

Ah! Trust, what a subject! The big subject! The only subject to get a long term job in the music business, really. Let’s talk about it, shall we? When you go to an audition and you know you can play the drum parts they ask you to prepare, what will make the difference between you…

When a student enters my room, I don’t have any preconceived ideas. I look at her in the moment. I have only the faintest idea of what to expect. She could have had a great week of practice and be ready to tear it up on the piano. But she might have struggled to find…

For the longest time I thought that my students were only interested in the data. If I was teaching piano or drums, it had to be about technique and what’s on the page. I was forgetting something, students are people and music is a universe, when the two meet there is a great amount of…

Taylor Hawkins took on an incredible challenge when he joined the Foo-Fighter. I would be frightened to play for Dave Grohl, and more than that, play the very drum parts he wrote (Let’s not forget that Dave Grohl did his own drumming during the first album of the band. As a matter of fact, he…

Because music notation wasn’t perfected before let’s say the 1400, we have very little ideas what the Greek listened to, or the Romans, for that matter. By the way, the music notation we have is French. Just saying. Anyway, besides the lack of music notation, there’s another obstacle: the instruments. Very few, if any of…